CoWare and SuperH Announce Support of SH-4 and SH-5 Processors For CoWare N2C

SAN JOSE, Calif., BRISTOL, UK, TOKYO, Japan - September 30, 2002 - SuperH™, Inc. and CoWare™, Inc. today announced an agreement to provide support for SuperH's range of 32 and 64-bit processor cores in the CoWare N2C® system-level design environment. The CoWare N2C environment enables designers to model, analyze and verify system-on-chip (SoC) designs at abstraction levels above logic synthesis, cutting design time and streamlining hardware and software development.

CoWare, SuperH and their joint customers have been using the CoWare N2C design environment to support the SuperH architecture for the past four years. Under this agreement, the two companies have created a powerful SoC design environment that integrates SuperH's simulation models of 32-bit SH-4 and 64-bit SH-5 processor cores and key peripherals into the CoWare N2C design system.

Designers can take advantage of CoWare's extensive system-level simulation and analysis tools to help determine the best bus architecture and hardware/software partitioning to contrast processor performance and overall system cost for area and/or power. Designers will also be able to use CoWare's bus generation capabilities and patented Interface Synthesis™ technology to automate the creation of hardware and bus interfaces as well as the software drivers. This will enable them to speed new designs to market and ease trade-off analysis.

''Partnering with CoWare is a key part of our strategy to enable our licensees to optimize their SoC specification and develop application software in parallel with the SoC design process,'' says Andy Jones, system architecture manager at SuperH.

Ed Begun, CoWare's director of business development and marketing adds, ''We are pleased to be able to offer SuperH customers a solution that allows them to move from specification to implementation significantly faster than before. Partnering with SuperH is a clear demonstration of CoWare's commitment to working with leading IP vendors providing state of the art cores.''

Determining the Best Architecture
The CoWare N2C design environment enables designers to efficiently evaluate 32- and 64-bit SuperH architectures to find optimal trade-offs for their products in a range of markets such as digital TV, home gateway, in-car entertainment, digital cameras and smart phones.

This integrated SoC design environment allows designers to more fully evaluate the effects of different hardware/software design trade-offs. It also enables designers to analyze CPU loading, determine the optimum memory configuration, and make sure that the hardware and software continue to work together as the design is finalized.

Using Platform-Based Design to Speed Development
Designers will be able to use the design environment to develop a virtual platform so that software development can start earlier and concurrently with hardware design. As low-level drivers, middleware, operating systems and embedded applications are developed; this software can be verified with the hardware model.

The virtual platform can also be used to dramatically reduce the time needed to create derivative designs. By creating one ''core'' platform that can be extended in a variety of ways for different designs, companies can leverage their design investments several times over.

Promoting an Open Solution with SystemC™
The design environment integrates with most popular design and development tools. Any algorithm-design tool that outputs SystemC code, the de facto standard design language for system design, or ANSI C code can provide input to the design environment. For hardware designers, the design environment supports all of the popular register-transfer-level (RTL) simulators, both Verilog and VHDL, as well as leading RTL and behavior synthesis tools. For software developers, the design environment supports existing C/C++ design flows, including the import of existing libraries, and is compatible with the leading SuperH-based compilers, debuggers and RTOS tools.

SuperH Partner Program
CoWare is a member of the recently-launched SuperH Partner Program that has been designed to deliver SuperH licensees the industry's leading solutions in the areas of SoC design, software development and design services.

Availability
The SH-4 and SH-5 models that integrate with the CoWare N2C system-level design environment are available now from SuperH and are included in the relevant SuperH toolchain for each processor family. Single and multi-user licenses are available with an SH-4 single user license hosted on Solaris for $7,500.

About CoWare
As the leading supplier of tools for system-level electronic design automation (EDA), CoWare, Inc. provides a platform-based design methodology that can cut system-on-chip (SoC) design time in half. As a founder and leader of the Open SystemC Initiative, CoWare is driving the industry towards a unifying system design language. The CoWare software is employed by major systems, IP and semiconductor companies including Alcatel, ARM, Canon, Fujitsu, InterDigital, Matsushita, Motorola, Nokia, Samsung, Sanyo, Sony, STMicroelectronics, Tensilica, Toshiba and Xilinx. CoWare was recognized as the 5th fastest-growing private company in Silicon Valley in 2000 (1). For more information, visit www.CoWare.com.

About SuperH
SuperH, Inc., was established as an independent company in 2001 following an agreement between STMicroelectronics and Hitachi to create an independently managed entity to develop processor cores for the open market.
The high-performance, low-cost and power efficient SH-4 core, is targeted at the next generation digital consumer, automotive and telecommunications applications. Earlier this year, SuperH released the SH5-100 series core expanding the portfolio of licensable IP offered by SuperH, Inc. In the future, SuperH, Inc. will develop all subsequent SuperH cores to the open market, including the development of the SH-6 and SH-7 cores.

The SuperH family of high-performance 32-bit and 64-bit RISC-based processor cores is ideally suited for applications that require a highly-integrated system-on-chip solution that includes a powerful embedded processing engine and can run a wide variety of application software on industry-standard operating systems and middleware. SuperH processors are used in many fields including digital consumer products such as set-top boxes, and digital cameras and games platforms, factory automation systems and car information systems. Further information about SuperH products can be found on www.superh.com.

CoWare and Interface Synthesis are trademarks and CoWare N2C is a registered trademark of CoWare, Inc.
All other trademarks are the property of their respective holders.

(1) San Jose Business Journal

SuperH is a registered trademark for products originally developed by Hitachi, Ltd. and is owned by Hitachi, Ltd.